The next few days of the expedition passed with relative quiet. The group moved from place to place, taking measurements from afar and observing the broken mana zone, keeping an eye out for any other odd items or potential problems. However, nothing ‘new’ popped up after the strange rock. The broken mana zone continued to shrink, slowly but surely, and the monster population continued to grow. On day four after reaching the broken mana zone, the group finally saw something new. It was a monster Alpha – at least, Alice assumed it was.

It looked like a spidercrab, but the creature was almost three times the size of a regular spidercrab, which was rather unnerving. If Alice had stood near it, it would have been taller than her, which was… not a great feeling. The eight spider legs had become longer, more hairy, and infinitely more disgusting, and the spidercrab was also quite a bit darker in color. Unlike smaller spidercrab packs, this one seemed to command a much larger pack – instead of half a dozen to a dozen spidercrabs, there were over a hundred spidercrabs that moved with the alpha. They were also far more organized than a normal Spidercrab pack – almost like small soldiers marching in formation as they roamed the broken mana zone and drained mana. Alice couldn’t help but wonder if this was what most monster alphas ended up looking like. Were they all just larger, more threatening versions of their brethren? Did they all command larger packs of their brethren, even the seemingly solitary monsters like Vinebears? Actually, what did a monster look like while they were evolving? How did evolving even work in the first place?

Suddenly, Alice found herself curious to know what the actual process of a monster ‘evolving’ into an alpha looked like. On Earth, the idea of a species suddenly hopping from one species to a very different version was rare. Even though there were a few cases Alice could think of where an organism would suddenly change radically, it was definitely uncommon – actually, the only example she could think off the top of her head was when caterpillars turned into butterflies. By contrast, it seemed to be a universal trait for monsters that if they had enough mana, they could turn into an alpha monster. Biologically, was it similar to the process for a caterpillar turning into a butterfly, or did it work off of totally different mechanics? If it was possible, perhaps she should take a look at the evolution process later, or see if anyone had written about it in detail. [Scientist] would definitely give her options for observing that later, especially since she had an Organic Magic seed, even if it currently had a maximum conversion ratio of 10%. While the conversion ratio DID matter when it came to the quality of Perks offered, there should still be options for her. Not to mention, while it was entirely a hunch on her part, she felt like it was pretty likely that her [Explorer of Magic] class would offer her more ways to turn her Organic Seed into something useful down the line.

The spidercrab alpha seemed completely disinterested in the expedition. Along with its pack, it continued to spread through the area, devouring mana as it searched for food. Alice watched it, wondering if she would ever get another chance to observe one from close – up without being at risk of being eaten.

“Is it your first time seeing an alpha?” Asked Milo, giving Alice a glance as the wagons rolled along.

“Yeah. I’ve heard some stories about them, and Illa has mentioned their existence before. However, I’ve never actually seen one in person. I was wondering what allows monsters to evolve,” said Alice.

“What do you mean?”

“Well, it seems odd to me. Why does a monster grow bigger and stronger when it eats enough mana? The idea that it happens so naturally seems strange to me. After all, it’s not like humans grow bigger if they eat enough food or something, you know? Mana is basically food for monsters, so the idea that they can suddenly multiply their size seems pretty odd to me.”

“I mean, if a human child doesn’t get enough nutrition as they’re growing up, they end up being small and frail as well, don’t they? And removing ‘negative’ Achievements like {Malnutrition} are more than slightly annoying and time consuming, at least to the best of my knowledge. Nowhere near as hard as {Old Age}, but humans who have {Malnutrition} and don’t get it fixed end up smaller, weaker, and frailer, right?” Milo shrugged. “I’m not saying it’s a perfect analogy, but… maybe monsters have some sort of similar process, except related to mana?”

“Are you suggesting that all monsters are malnourished normally? But humans don’t suddenly recover from being malnourished in a few hours do they? Wait, how long do monsters actually take to evolve?”

Milo scratched his head. “Honestly? I have no clue. There were probably some experiments done on it with Spidercrabs – they’re a pretty weak species even after evolution, so they make perfect test subjects. I would be pretty surprised if no one has tried artificially forcing them to evolve and recording the process. Since you’re Illa’s student, maybe you could ask her? She might have some books related to the matter.”

“At least in her library, she doesn’t have it. I’ve already read through a good chunk of it.”

“That’s unfortunate. Hmm…” Milo shrugged. “I doubt anything that specific would be available in the bookstore either, since there’s only one in the town and it’s mostly aimed towards wealthier merchants and mages. I guess you probably can’t find out immediately. Well, maybe Illa knows about it off the top of her head? If not, I don’t know what to tell you, unfortunately.”

“I’ll check later,” said Alice, trying to hide her disappointment.

“Hmm… if you’ve got coin, I think the bookstore has some sort of ordering service for books. No clue how that works though.”

“I’ll at least take a look,” said Alice. She didn’t hold high hopes though – even if Illa upped her pay the way she had said she might after they got back from the expedition, books in this world were expensive. She doubted she could afford it, especially if she needed to pay some sort of extra shipping fee from a more populated town or something.

No matter how I look at it, the idea of suddenly radically changing after eating enough food seems pretty interesting, at least. In fact, it… Alice suddenly felt like she was missing something. Mana? Food?

She had already concluded that Mana was probably related to the System, and specifically to attributes. She hadn’t tested it for other things, like Skills or Perks, but humans… seemed to radically change upon contact with mana as well. In fact, when Alice had been ‘exposed to enough mana’ upon entering this world, she had immediately grown a strange new organ behind her heart and gained the ability to use magic.

Alice was 100% sure that on Earth, a human growing a new organ after eating a lot of food was not one of the abilities humans were born with. Growing a new organ behind the heart would have probably just been considered a tumor on Earth, and Alice would have been rushed to the hospital to get treatment for cancer. In fact, given the sheer size of the mage organ behind her heart, it was a miracle that it didn’t block off the flow of blood to the rest of her body and kill her on the spot. Monsters grew bigger and stronger after eating a lot of mana. Humans… also seemed to do so, except for the fact that this growth wasn’t as externally obvious and was controlled by the Status Screen?

“Hey, Milo. What exactly is mana?”

“That’s a really philosophical question,” said Milo after some thought. “What is the air? What is life? Really, what’s everything around us? Is it that kind of question?”

Huh? “No, I mean literally. What IS mana. It seems to sometimes behave like a gas, but I don’t know of any gas that can form anything like this-“ Alice gestured towards the broken mana zone, which had remained stable for multiple days at this point. The idea of a gas just… clumping together like a wall and not moving around at all was… at the very least, unusual given the other environmental conditions here. “It seems to cause life to change when it comes into contact with it, mages can turn it into anything they can imagine as long as they’re willing to form a seed, even if some of them don’t translate very well in practice…” Alice shook her head. “I just can’t figure out what it is. It’s… strange.”

“Dunno why you’d find it strange, but I suppose it is a bit different from other things, now that you mention it,” said Milo. “Still, I can’t imagine it having much relevance to daily life.”

Alice sighed. Sometimes, she felt like even though she could speak Illvarian nearly as fluently as a native, there was still an unbridgeable communication barrier. She spent another few minutes trying to see if Milo had any ideas on the subject, but came up with a total blank. In the end, she gave up on the conversation for now. Still, the question pricked at her thoughts. Mana suddenly seemed even more interesting than she had first thought it was.

* * *

On the fifth day, Alice saw other monsters she had never seen before wandering the most mana-dense region of the broken mana zone the group had encountered so far. A six eyed wolf, which stood four or five meters high. It was huge compared to the humans, and even most of the dead, withered trees in the area. There were also crows that seemed to flicker in and out of existence if she didn’t look at them carefully. Most strange of all was a clump of what appeared to literally be moving mana. Alice couldn’t tell exactly what it was – however, seeing the thing sent chills down her spine. Even though Alice’s sense of danger wasn’t particularly developed, something was telling her that whatever she was looking at, it was bad news. Terrible news. The worst news.

Unlike other areas, this area didn’t have any spidercrabs or vinebears at all. When Illa saw the area, she stopped, frowned, and then ordered the group to make a very big detour around the area. Alice had never seen most of the monsters in the area before, but she heartily agreed with staying as far away from them as possible. They set her nerves on edge.

Two days after that, the expedition had finally circled around most of the broken mana zone. Whenever the group stopped and did more calculations, to make sure the broken mana was decreasing, they would move on after confirming that the broken mana was slowly dropping. Furthermore, every time the group moved from one area to another, the average amount of mana in a new region seemed to decrease.

However, even though the Expedition had yet to finish circling the region and checking everything, the monster horde finally showed signs of movement. In some areas the group surveyed that day, the monsters began twitching, and in the final spot for the day, a fight broke out between a few packs of spidercrabs. Alice started to feel a bit nervous at that – it was obvious that the monsters were growing restless. The massive region of broken mana, which had seemed to stretch towards the heavens and contain boundless mana when the group had first appeared, had begun to shrink. The mana was thinner, the great pillar of mana was slowly crumbling back towards the earth, and the boundaries of the broken mana zone were shrinking.

And without readily available mana floating around in the air, other sources of mana would be back on the menu. Such as humans belonging to the expedition.

Alice clearly wasn’t the only one with this concern. Illa looked at the continuously depleting mana, and then sighed before she turned back to the rest of the expedition.

“We will return now,” said Illa. The expression on her face was difficult to read. Alice couldn’t tell whether she was disappointed or happy that the expedition was finally coming to an end. However, Alice was glad that they would be leaving this area. It was filled with crawling monsters, and she doubted it contained any new discoveries for her to explore at this point. The only thing she regretted was the fact that she hadn’t come across any spidercrab eggs to see if she could figure out anything if monsters underwent some form of mana baptism, but that had been a bit of a far-fetched hope in the first place. After all, it was quite far away from the season they laid eggs.

The expedition turned around, and began to return to Cyra.

* * *

As the wagons travelled back the way the group had come, Alice kept messing with the strange rock. Of course, she only did so when Milo was paying attention, ready to deal with any emergencies that cropped up. Sometimes, Illa also flew over to the wagon Alice and Milo were travelling in, to watch the rock and prod at it as well. The end result was… nothing. Apart from the odd properties it displayed when it had first been found, it showed no visual signs of being anything at all besides an ordinary rock. Alice didn’t have any Perks that let her investigate or interact with objects, so she couldn’t see the great ‘nothing’ other people got when they interacted with the rock. In fact, Alice was almost tempted to ask if the group was mistaken somehow – the stone seemed to incredibly ordinary that it would have been easy for her to overlook, if not for the way the group found it.

Hours and days passed as the group headed back towards Cyra. Unlike the journey to the broken mana zone, the group didn’t come across any other humans. Alice, personally, was quite thankful for that. She didn’t need any other fights to teach her how ridiculously outclassed she was when fighting people outside of her age group, not to mention in a three on one encounter. Even if she had managed to live against apparently trained soldiers with only a few weeks of training under Illa, Alice had discovered that she really hated situations where her life was on the line.

She spent the nights the group camped getting to know the other mages in the group. Even though she wouldn’t really call any of them friends, besides perhaps Milo, she didn’t meet anybody that she hated, either. Most of them were either vaguely interested in ‘Illa’s student,’ or didn’t care much about her presence. Even those that were disinterested in her weren’t overtly rude about it – they simply thought they had other things they would rather do besides chat with a teenager, even if she was a newly baptized mage as well.

Finally, the group arrived back at Cyra. The [Guards] at the gates seemed relieved to see the Expedition return with few casualties.

“Lady Illa, it is good to see that you returned.”

“Indeed. Did anyone come to make trouble while I was gone?”

“A few Sigmusi bastards walked into the ambush. A few high-level [Assassins], along with maybe twenty or thirty [Deserters]. They even had a damn mage.”

Illa frowned. “They’re not even trying to pretend that the soldiers are actually deserters anymore, are they? Good grief. I rather hope the king brings this blatant provocation to the table the next time the five big nations of the Shil Confederacy hold council. Were there any fatalities?”

“No, there weren’t. We were very lucky,” the [Guard] said, grinning slightly. “We are rather lucky, since-“

“Ah, Illa darling! It has been quite a while! How have you been?”

Alice turned to see the new speaker, and came across the most beautiful girl she had ever laid eyes on. The [Guard] seemed slightly surprised when he was interrupted, but Alice had a hard time focusing on him.

The girl’s voice was musical, as if every single word was sang instead of spoken. Her eyes were golden, rather than any of the normal eye colors she had seen so far in this world. Her skin literally glowed, even under the sunlight, making Alice wonder whether the woman had somehow installed flashlights under her skin. Her hair was blonde, nearly matching the color of her eyes. Somehow, the fact that the two colors almost matched but were subtly different drew out the beauty of each color, complementing each other and exemplifying the radiance the woman – no, the girl seemed to give off with every movement and every word. She was, indeed, the most perfect example of the word ‘beautiful’ Alice had ever seen. Her age was hard to discern – at first glance, she seemed to be in her late teens or early twenties. However, her bearing was old, speaking of decades passed and experience far beyond what her external appearance suggested. Despite looking like a young girl or young woman, she seemed strangely old.

Still, she was exceptionally beautiful. In the way that the sun was beautiful, or the moonlight of a full moon drew one’s eyes towards it.

And although that was what drew Alice’s eyes towards the woman at first, Alice quickly noticed several strange features about the woman besides her inhuman beauty. Every single shadow within fifty meters of the girl seemed to slightly squirm at every one of her movements. She also had, by far, the most mana Alice had ever seen. The density of mana inside of the girl’s body was dozens of times higher than it had been in the Broken Mana zone. Almost out of habit, Alice tried to use {Precise Mana Measurement} on her, to see how much mana was inside of the woman’s body. The Perk failed to activate, giving Alice a brief stinging sensation before the woman glanced at her. For a brief moment, the woman seemed amused, the corners of her lips quirking upwards before her expression returned to the grin she wore while facing Illa. Still, Alice couldn’t help but look at the mana in the woman’s skin, her eyes, her… entire body. It was as if her body wasn’t just storing some mana here and there – it was as if the woman’s body was almost entirely made out of mana, and it just happened to be shaped to look like a regular human being on the outside.

Illa’s face contorted with shock. A moment later, she controlled it as she looked at the woman who looked at least a decade younger than her.

And then Illa bowed her head a full thirty degrees, the first time Alice had seen the woman bow to another person.

“Illa, servant of the crown, greets Allira, Immortal of Song and Shadow.”